


Negative Space

by abluta



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, POV Second Person, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:02:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abluta/pseuds/abluta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the people he doesn't talk about that make Tony Stark who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Space

It's a given that, if someone mentions Howard Stark, you get this distant look in your eye and a manic lilt to your voice, and you deflect the subject away with jokes. When _you_ bring him up--not too often--it's about your resentment or your jealousy or your conflicted emotions about whether or not he actually gave a shit about you or this or that or whatever it is they want to think feel about him. Because, to them, he is the man who made you who you are, for better or worse. You have his looks, you have his vices, you have his money, you have his business.

It's so obvious that it makes the misdirection simple. It's so obvious, sometimes even you believe it. But, really, it's the people you don't talk about who made you.

* * *

She kept her cigarettes in a platinum case and smoked them with a matching theatre length slimline cigarette holder. Her initials engraved on the sides of both. MCC, not MCS. 

"Never let them take away your name, Anthony" she said to you, over and over. "Names are power. Put your name on everything. If we were cats, we'd mark our territory. Since we're human, we use our name." 

She would let you play with her diamonds and pearls while she dressed for dinner parties, because she thought you should get used to enjoying the feel of expensive things in your hands. "Stark men need something tactile to remind them who they are," she told him. "You never want to know the feeling of dirt in your hands," she told him. "You never want to feel the gnaw of hunger in your belly," she told him.

The first time you liked a girl, she sat you down and looked straight in your eyes and said, "Never like a girl so much that you'd be sad if she's gone the next day." She made you promise on that one. She never made you promise anything, but she made you promise _that_. When you promised, she added, "And only touch diamonds and pearls."

* * *

After Pepper starts letting you see her naked on a pretty regular basis, sometimes you'll trace your name on her skin with your fingertips. You do this right up until she realizes what it is you're doing, and there's an argument and she doesn't let you see her naked again for nearly a month.

* * *

Steve says one day (seemingly out of nowhere until Pepper later reminds you it's mother's day) that your mother must've been a hell of a woman, because he can't imagine Howard settled down easily.

This bothers you for two reasons. One is that Steve hardly ever curses. He saves them up like it's still the Great Depression and they're shiny little pennies. And he uses those pennies to hurl at people when they least expect it, so they get taken off guard by something as light as _hell_ which you probably say it about eighteen times before breakfast.

The other is that he mentioned your mother, and no one mentions your mother, and you spent the next few months having little rapid-fire panic attacks. You'll be walking down a hall and suddenly you can't breathe and you have to lean on the wall to keep from hitting the floor. 

You blame your arc reactor, and you make a few calibrations. Every time you touch it, you think of how it got there.

* * *

Sometimes you dream that you are Yinsen, and that your captors have brought you Tony Stark, bleeidng and full of the same kind of shrapnel that killed your whole family. There is anesthetic available, but you don't use any. You like the sound of his screams when you cut into his flesh. You like cutting him open and finding more metal fragments than you could ever pull out. 

You know that if he dies, they'll kill you. But you want to die, don't you? You want to die more than you want to make Tony a better man, so that he can become your legacy. You want to die more than you want a purpose in your death. Because this is the man who killed the woman you loved, who killed the children you made with her.

Because you would never be Yinsen. You could never be that good. You let Tony Stark die, and you smile when they shoot you in the head.

* * *

Bruce looks over his glasses at you sometimes when you're talking, and he's got this crinkle in his brow that reminds you of being in that cave. He's looking at you like that, and you almost call him Yinsen. You don't get past the first syllable before you stop cold. He tilts his head slightly. Then, "Are you okay?" And you say you've been having trouble with the arc reactor lately.

* * *

You haven't said Yinsen's name since he died. Not all of it. Names are power, and his could become poison in the wrong hands. Designer poison that is only lethal to one person in the world; you used to work with a guy who makes something like that, and you still work with someone who's probably used something like that.

You don't say his name, but you hear his voice everyday. _Don't waste it._ When you're looking into the bottom of another empty glass. _Don't waste it._ When the anxiety's so bad you lock yourself up for days working so you don't have to talk to anyone. _Don't waste it._ When you're scratching at your hands because you can still feel the dirt from that cave. _Don't waste it._ No matter how many times you save the world.

Because that's him that did that. That's not you. He's the hero, and you're all the vices that make you afraid to say his name.

* * *

There is no official record of Yinsen's death.

On the other hand, the official record says your parents died in a car accident and Obadiah Stane died in a plane accident, so official records don't mean all that much anyway.

* * *

A photograph is a record, your mother told you. She told you never to let anyone take a photograph of you that wasn't staged, and so you have hundred of family photos that are nothing but poses and fake smiles. Obadiah's in a lot of them, with his arm around your father's shoulders and that smile you thought was real right up until he ripped your heart out, put his arm around your shoulder and smiled for a photo opportunity no one was there to see.

Actually, you probably have more photos of Obadiah than you do of your mother. "You can burn photographs," she said, "But somebody has the negatives." You think it's probably for the best she never lived to see camera phones.

The photos you do have of her all have these thin, studied smiles. She's always with your father, and she's always holding his hand or touching his shoulder and there's always visual tension in her forearm, like he might fall over if she doesn't hold him up.

Of all the photos, you have only found one with both your mother and Obadiah. They are on either side of your father. Obadiah has his hand on one shoulder and is smiling at the camera. Your mother is standing with her hands folded, her head slightly bowed, and her eyes shifted toward Obadiah. The look on her face is one you've only ever seen on one other person--a bemused and hopeless hatred toward someone she can't destroy.

It's the way Yinsen used to look at you.

You burn the photo.

* * *

There's a picture of you and Steve in the newspaper with your hand on his shoulder smiling while you say something in his ear. And Steve, not being the type to understand photo ops, has his arms crossed, and he's scowling out at nothing.

* * *

Everhart publishes a piece in Vanity Fair about Obadiah Stane. Pepper gets word of it just before it hits the shelves, and she sits you down to let you know what's in it. It's the first time the two of you talk about Obadiah after what happened.

"She quotes an anonymous source that he was selling weapons to both sides. She implies that's why you were kidnapped. There are some rhetorical questions about... about the circumstances of his death."

You're staring at the headline so that the picture of you and Obadiah is blurred by your peripheral vision. "A _Stane_ on Stark Industries. Really? She went with a pun?"

"This is serious, Tony. You're going to get some questions about this."

You close the magazine and toss it across the desk. It slides off onto the floor. "So, what? I didn't have any knowledge of blah blah blah. I have my best people looking into blah blah blah. His death was a tragic accident. Blah. Blah. Blah."

"The last time you had to field questions about him, you'd just come out as Iron Man. This is going to be different. They're not distracted this time, and you've got to have better answers."

You fish in your pocket for the bottle of painkillers you keep on you at all times. "And S.H.I.E.L.D let her publish this after all the crap they've given me about secrecy."

"I think they've got some bigger things to worry about right now."

"I think they're still mad at me for not going along with their cover story."

"Either way."

You swallow a couple of pills dry. "Just tell me what to say. I'll say it."

* * *

"Just say exactly what I told you," Obadiah would whisper into your ear before just about every press conference, every board meeting, every conversation. His beard tickled your ear, but you never flinched away. "Don't think these people are your friends. I'm your friend, Tony. I'm the one looking out for you. Without me, who is there who'd look out for you?"

* * *

You already have three major biographies out, along with several unauthorized ones. All of them include that quote about how you never got to say goodbye to your father. All of them include something about how your father influenced you, whether it's his genius, or his business sense, or his philandering, or his drinking, or his charm.

They say your mother was beautiful. There's usually a picture usually a picture to prove it captioned with the name Maria Stark.

Obadiah Stane was his father's business partner who ran the company for a few years until you were ready to take his place..

There is a passage in one of the unauthorized ones about a fellow prisoner who assisted him in making the first suit. No picture. No name.

Your father made you who you are, and the questions about Obadiah go away eventually.

* * *

"When I die," your mother says one time, like she knows she's going to die soon, "I don't want you to be sentimental about it. Don't leave flowers on my grave or say I'm looking down on you from a better place. Don't say that I was kind or gentle or that I read stories to you at night." She opens up her platinum cigarette case and a lighter. "Don't say anything at all, if you can help it."

So you stand at the podium, seventeen and staring out at everyone with a coffin on either side of you, and your hand full of note cards that Obadiah helped you write. You say, "My father was a great man." And that's all you get out before you walk away and Obadiah takes your place.

And much, much later you're in that cave with Yinsen, and he asks if you have a family. You can't say anything but no.

* * *

"Just tell me what to say, and I'll say it," you tell Pepper, but that's not the end of the conversation.

The end of the conversation is a few hours later. You've had a few drinks by then, and a few more painkillers, and you say, "Obadiah used to say I was just like him. More like him than my dad."

Pepper looks you right in the eye, and says, "He was wrong."

You choose to believe her, and she does too.

* * *

You're giving a speech about the development of arc reactor technology at a banquet. You say your father made you who you are today, for better or for worse. You have his looks, you have his vices, you have his money, you have his business.

You say he made you. You say that's why you carry on this work, the best work he ever did.

And you smile to yourself, as if it's your own private joke, and everyone believes it.


End file.
